1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to storage area networks. More specifically, the present invention provides mechanisms for efficiently and effectively providing names services in a fibre channel fabric.
2. Description of Related Art
In many storage area networks (SANs), devices are identified using port world wide names (pwwns or wwns). Devices include host bus adapters, tape devices, and disk arrays. A storage area network can have thousands of end devices and thousands of corresponding world wide names. World wide names have formats such as 22:35:00:0c:85:e9:d2:c2 or 13:d3:33:d1:0c:93:e9:d2 that are not easily interpreted by system administrators. Management of a storage area network and its associated devices can become difficult.
Some naming mechanisms are provided for zoning. Zoning allows the partition of a fibre channel fabric into smaller fabrics to allow the implementation of features such as security and restrictions. Devices belonging to a single functional group are typically placed under the same zone. For example, devices involved in online transactions could be placed in one zone while devices associated with backing up user data can be placed in another zone.
The T11 standard FC-SW-3 defines an object called a Zone Alias Object that allows a user to define a plain text name to represent a particular device. However, these mechanisms are very limited and are restricted to the process of zoning. Consequently, it is desirable to provide methods and apparatus for improved names services in a fibre channel fabric that overcome some of the drawbacks noted above.